Jessea L. Vaughan's poem looks back on childhood with a mix of amusement and gentle embarrassment. The speaker, speaking as "we," remembers a time of being "foolish and confused," when everything seemed simple and certain. Back then, they laughed at pain, cried for joy, and boasted that they knew it all, even though they "knew volumes about nothing."
Each stanza opens with the refrain "When we were young," then piles up examples: worrying over trivial things as if they could change the world, believing nonsense, and mixing up truth and lies, up and down, right and wrong. The reversals make childhood feel like a topsy-turvy fantasyland.
The mood is wry and nostalgic. The speaker seems to shake their head at their younger selves, yet the poem never turns harsh. Ending on the same words it began with, "foolish and confused," gives the poem a circular feel, as if the speaker is suggesting that this confusion never entirely goes away.